On the lot
by Ridel
Summary: Things can get a bit distracting for Ridel on the Ark. How’s a body supposed to keep their attention on writing when being attacked by Decepticons? Pranked by Sideswipe? Or harangued about their health by Ratchet? :Flames excepted with dignity:


Chapter one

My place of Zen and peace

In which Ridel makes herself sick while trying to win NaNoWriMo. Much to everyone's annoyance.

Optimus had let Ridel take one of the Arks storage closets and make it her own. She'd moved a few things in and set up her authoress haven. There was a piece of paper she'd stuck to the door, which read  
"My place of Zen and peace. Freaking keep out! Sideswipe this means YOU!" 

One day while passing Sideswipe had spotted the sign and written "Warning, Talentless Authoress." under it, along with an unflattering doodle of the transfan in question.  
She'd reciprocated with a doodle of her own. And things had just gone downhill from there. A doodle war had been spawned.

Sometimes bots would make small detours down her hallway so they could see if anything new had been added. When the first piece of paper had been crammed to capacity, Jazz had been kind enough to find a new piece of paper and tape it up next to the old one. Happy to encourage the war to continue.

Right now, Spike and Bumblebee were standing outside of the pirated closet looking a little worried. "How long has she been in there?" asked Bumblebee. Spike shrugged.

"I haven't seen her all day. But she's usually got her word count by now."

"Hey you two," said Jazz as he strolled down the hall to meet them. " Anything new today?"

"No nothing." Said Bee, a hint of worry in his voice. "We don't think she's been out of her room since last night. Not even to add to the sign."

"We brought her some food." Said Spike, motioning to the small McDonalds bag he had in hand. "Ratchet's still ticked at her for making herself sick while pulling those all nighters a while ago. And he told us not to let her skip any more meals."

Jazz looked puzzled. "What? She hasn't come out at all? She's gonna leave that comment about her 'coming out of the closet' unchecked? Normally she'd be foamin' at the mouth! What's wrong?" 

"Maybe Sideswipe went to far with that. You know how she feels about Slash." Said Spike shrugging.

Jazz shook his head. "Nah she aint that sensitive. Maybe she's just really in the zone today."

"Not if how she was ranting about her 'piece of scrap' NaNo yesterday was any indication." Said Bee, making invisible quotes around the words. "She was really upset because the story was going nowhere and she couldn't figure out how to get it back on track."

"Yeah besides, she said she was taking a day off because she was ahead on her word count." Said Spike worriedly. It wasn't like Ridel to work when she didn't absolutely need to. 

"Well we aint gonna find out what's up by standin' here speculatin'. Lets take a peek." Said Jazz. He typed the entry code into a wall panel, but it just beeped red at him, the door remaining stubbornly shut.

"She changed the code on day three remember? She changes it every night now to keep people like us from bugging her." Said Spike with a slight frown.

Jazz frowned and rubbed his chin in thought. "Well if we can't get in on our own, we'll just have to get her to let us in." He swiped the Burger bag from Spikes unresisting hands and rapped on the door. 

"Hey kid you in there?" He asked.

There was a moment of silence before a slightly confused sounding answer came. "What? No, no I'm not!"

Jazz, Bee and Spike all looked at each other in confusion. Jazz shrugged at the others and continued.

"You sure? Cause we got some food out here with your name on it."

"No thanks! Not hungry!" came the distracted reply.

Spike stepped forward, deciding to try his luck. "Hey, me and Bee were just going to see about watching movie in the rec room. You wana come?"

There was a long drawn out silence from within. Then the wall panel beeped green and the door slid open a fraction. They could hardly distinguish the sliver of pail face that was revealed in the all-encompassing gloom of the storage closet. 

"… Did you say food? And a movie?" she asked slowly. Spike smiled and nodded.

"Yeah, what do ya say? Looks like you could use a break."

Ridel looked like she was waging some sort of internal battle.

Jazz smiled and motioned for her to come out. "Yeah come on kid! The words'll still be there when you come back." This turned out to be the wrong thing to say. Ridels gasped. Then her eyes narrowed to slits and a deep frown appeared on her face.

"Thanks but no." she said shortly, then the door slid shut again. Cutting off their view of the pail and unhealthy authoress. 

"Thanks a lot Jazz." Grumbled Spike. "We almost had her."

"Guys she looked really bad." Said Bumblebee.

"Aw now that aint very nice Bee." Said Jazz smirking a little.

"No I mean she looked really unhealthy!" Bee clarified quickly. "Do you think we should tell Ratchet?"

"I think we'll have to." Said Spike despairingly. "The last time I saw anyone with a complexion that pale, was the corpse on CSI last night."

000

Ridel sat in the dark confines of the closet and tried to get her mind back on track. She'd been writing a battle scene. One of those evil battle scenes. Why did she have to go and decide to write about giant robots this year? Pathos and angst she could do. Humor she could do. Romance… well she wasn't to sure about that. But she could probably do it a lot better than battle after battle!  
Dialogue was fun, and she enjoyed making her characters Fallout and Livewire bicker all the time. But surprisingly enough it wasn't getting her any closer to the end.

about five minutes later, there was a very loud sharp clanging on the closet door accompanied by a familiar irate voice.

"Ridel? Open this slagging door right now!" Ratchet yelled.

Ridel yelped and accidentally knocked over her energy drink with her foot.

"Oh no." she said detachedly as she watched the life giving caffeine leak out of the can and soak into her floor mattress.

The banging came again. "Ridel I'm not going to ask you again!"

'You didn't ask the first time!' she thought muzzily, trying to get her caffeine poisoned and sleep deprived brain to form a coherent response. 

From outside in the hall, the bots heard the faintly concussed sounding voice of the Transfan shout,

"I didn't do it! What ever it is, it's not my fault!"

Ratchet folded his arms and glared at the door in front of him, then continued. "Bumblebee and Spike say you haven't been out of that closet once today. Not even to eat."

They waited a moment before a muffled answer came.

"Yeah but, I got food in here!" 

"Doritos and marshmallows, I'll bet my spark on it. And I swear If I find any more of those energy drinks in there after I specifically told you-"

He was interrupted as Ridel, in a mad dash to hide the numerous empty cans under her covers, knocked a few over which clattered and rolled with a distinct empty pop can sound. An indistinct curse followed.

Jazz stifled a chuckle as the CMO's optics narrowed. He had been planning to give the girl until the count of three, but in light of what he'd just heard he reached over to the wall panel and typed in his security override access code. It came with being the chief medical officer. It was supposed to be for emergencies only, but anyone testing Ratchets patients like this unfortunate transfan would soon be facing an emergency anyway.

The door slid open and the others in the corridor peered around Ratchet, trying to pierce the gloom of the closet and get a glimpse of the self tortured Authoress hidden inside.

"Aw man…" said Spike.

Ridel shielded her eyes as the hallway door slid open revealing Jazz, Spike and Bumblebee, all looking slightly concerned, and Ratchet. If looks could kill, Ridel would have been reduced to a pile of ash the second Ratchet took in the state of the closet, and her appearance.

A discarded bag of BBQ chips, at least one can of some sort of energy drink half sticking out from under her covers, dirty clothes tossed any old where.  
Pasty pail skin. Dark rings under her eyes. Frizzy disheveled hair. She looked dehydrated and malnourished.

"What?" She asked, looking genuinely confused. 

Ratchet took two massive transformer sized stomps into the room. Ridel resisted the sudden urge to dive under her covers and never ever come out.  
With one movement he reached down, unplugged the computer and scooped up the horrified authoress.

"You're coming with me." He growled, then straightened up and stomped back out of the room. Completely ignoring he fractured complaints of the red head in hand. He paused outside the door long enough to slide it shut again.

"Jazz I want you to tell Prowl to put a lock on this thing. The kid's not to go back in until I say so."

Jazz gave a jaunty salute. "Sure thing Doc."

"But if can't get to my computer, I'll lose NaNoWriMo!" Cried the authoress in despair. Her plea fell on unsympathetic audios.

Ratchet glared down at her as he started to march down the corridor. "You'll lose more than your stupid writing contest if I ever catch you disobeying my medical orders like this again. And how many times have I told you not to drink more than one of those energy drinks in a day?"

Both his voice and the much smaller and weaker voice of the authoress died away as they disappeared down the hall.

AN:

Not exactly amazing stuff, but I wanted to upload something and this was all I had on hand. I wrote this a while ago actually, when I was a few days ahead on my NaNo and yet still felt like writing. But of course I didn't want to write more of my novel. So I wrote about me not writing it.

I know it's one of those horrible self inserts. It takes place after  
'The Pitch' though Farber isn't in it. And I really did feel stupid and confused all the time when I pulled my few All nighters during the past month.

(Oh by the way, _NaNoWriMo_ stands for _National Novel Writing Month._ It's a contest in which one must write a 50,000 word novel in a month. I did in fact finish it.)

I have a lot of fun writing about me and the bots, though it makes me feel guilty because I often don't like reading those kinds of stories. I've started writing a couple of other little episodes too. Hopefully they are more interesting than this XP

What do you think? (And I will totally respect you if you say that you'd rather scratch your eyes out than read more of these.)


End file.
